Jim Sinclair
Fish Fanatic
I'm new here and with plenty of questions.
I have goldfish: 7 commons and 2 comets. I did not plan to have goldfish. I'm a longtime dog and cat rescuer.
Six years ago my housemate, who worked at the State Fair, told me (months later when it was too late to do anything about it) that after the 2012 State Fair ended, he had found bagged leftover prize goldfish, some dead and some still alive, thrown away in the trash. I posted about it to a regional animal rights group, and several of us organized for the 2013 fair. On the last night of the fair we approached all the vendors we could find who were giving away fish, and offered to take leftover ones off their hands. (See a story about this at http://www.wrvo.org/post/fate-leftover-state-fair-goldfish-dumpster) But apparently we missed a vendor, because the next day my housemate called me and said he'd found more fish in the trash. I told him to take them to the person who had tanks set up for the ones we'd gotten the night before. But she was a college student and was in class, not home and not answering her phone, so he brought them here.
They spent their first night here in a bucket. The next day a fellow rescuer drove 70 miles to take some of the fish from the big last-night rescue, and left a donated 20 gallon tank for the ones I had from the trash. More than half of them died because they were already ammonia-burned by the time they got here after being in the trash all night, and I didn't have a cycled tank, and I also didn't know what I was doing at first. It also developed that several of them had polycystic kidney disease, which an aquatic veterinarian told me is caused by a parasite that's common in the mud ponds where a lot of "feeder" goldfish are bred. Of the fish that survived the initial ordeal of being in the trash overnight and then my initial inexpert tank cycling, I've since lost two of them to PKD and I have one now who is quite bloated from it, though still able to swim and eat normally.
Fast-forward through several tank upgrades, and finally someone told me I could set up a basement pond in an Intex above-ground pool. I now have my nine surviving adult fish in a 440 gallon pool in my basement. I wish someone had told me about this option earlier. It's not only better for the fish, it's so much easier and more affordable for me! There's no way I would ever have been able to afford an aquarium that big, or to get it into my house even if I somehow miraculously managed to acquire one.
My fish first started spawning about four years ago, when they were about a year old. By that time I had already given up on having plants in their tank, because whatever they didn't eat, they killed by digging up the roots. So nowhere to hide eggs, all eggs got devoured immediately after spawning, no baby fish.
Until--
Last July I made a mistake and used a filter bag whose weave was coarse enough for eggs to get through. Fish hatched in the filter bag. I removed the filter bag when I saw four little ones, and put it into a plastic tub. Surprise! (Well, probably no surprise at all to anyone who knows about goldfish breeding.) There were way more than four in there! About a month ago when I moved them from the plastic tub into the 75 gallon tank that's still sitting in my living room from before I set up the basement pond for the adults, I counted 293 babies.
The babies are now three months old. They range in size from under an inch to more than two inches. I've moved some of them back into plastic tubs to ease crowding in the 75 gallon tank. I also found one lying on the tank floor last week and initially thought it was dead, but it's still alive and either sick, injured, or possibly disabled. That one is in a hospital tank in the kitchen.
My most pressing interests at this time:
1. Caring for the incapacitated one.
2. Finding good homes--as pets, not food!--for the babies.
3. Making sure this doesn't happen again! I've already replaced the too-porous filter bag with one the LFS guy assured me is too tightly woven for eggs to get through.
I have goldfish: 7 commons and 2 comets. I did not plan to have goldfish. I'm a longtime dog and cat rescuer.
Six years ago my housemate, who worked at the State Fair, told me (months later when it was too late to do anything about it) that after the 2012 State Fair ended, he had found bagged leftover prize goldfish, some dead and some still alive, thrown away in the trash. I posted about it to a regional animal rights group, and several of us organized for the 2013 fair. On the last night of the fair we approached all the vendors we could find who were giving away fish, and offered to take leftover ones off their hands. (See a story about this at http://www.wrvo.org/post/fate-leftover-state-fair-goldfish-dumpster) But apparently we missed a vendor, because the next day my housemate called me and said he'd found more fish in the trash. I told him to take them to the person who had tanks set up for the ones we'd gotten the night before. But she was a college student and was in class, not home and not answering her phone, so he brought them here.
They spent their first night here in a bucket. The next day a fellow rescuer drove 70 miles to take some of the fish from the big last-night rescue, and left a donated 20 gallon tank for the ones I had from the trash. More than half of them died because they were already ammonia-burned by the time they got here after being in the trash all night, and I didn't have a cycled tank, and I also didn't know what I was doing at first. It also developed that several of them had polycystic kidney disease, which an aquatic veterinarian told me is caused by a parasite that's common in the mud ponds where a lot of "feeder" goldfish are bred. Of the fish that survived the initial ordeal of being in the trash overnight and then my initial inexpert tank cycling, I've since lost two of them to PKD and I have one now who is quite bloated from it, though still able to swim and eat normally.
Fast-forward through several tank upgrades, and finally someone told me I could set up a basement pond in an Intex above-ground pool. I now have my nine surviving adult fish in a 440 gallon pool in my basement. I wish someone had told me about this option earlier. It's not only better for the fish, it's so much easier and more affordable for me! There's no way I would ever have been able to afford an aquarium that big, or to get it into my house even if I somehow miraculously managed to acquire one.
My fish first started spawning about four years ago, when they were about a year old. By that time I had already given up on having plants in their tank, because whatever they didn't eat, they killed by digging up the roots. So nowhere to hide eggs, all eggs got devoured immediately after spawning, no baby fish.
Until--
Last July I made a mistake and used a filter bag whose weave was coarse enough for eggs to get through. Fish hatched in the filter bag. I removed the filter bag when I saw four little ones, and put it into a plastic tub. Surprise! (Well, probably no surprise at all to anyone who knows about goldfish breeding.) There were way more than four in there! About a month ago when I moved them from the plastic tub into the 75 gallon tank that's still sitting in my living room from before I set up the basement pond for the adults, I counted 293 babies.
The babies are now three months old. They range in size from under an inch to more than two inches. I've moved some of them back into plastic tubs to ease crowding in the 75 gallon tank. I also found one lying on the tank floor last week and initially thought it was dead, but it's still alive and either sick, injured, or possibly disabled. That one is in a hospital tank in the kitchen.
My most pressing interests at this time:
1. Caring for the incapacitated one.
2. Finding good homes--as pets, not food!--for the babies.
3. Making sure this doesn't happen again! I've already replaced the too-porous filter bag with one the LFS guy assured me is too tightly woven for eggs to get through.
